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About this Book

Institutional foundation stories have a tendency to change and develop with the passage of time and much repetition. Maritime social historian R.W.H. Miller here explores the life of The Rev. John Ashley and his association with the foundation story of the Mission to Seafarers, the work of which society is much admired by its present Patron, HRH the Princess Royal. The traditional story is that Ashley's son, out walking by the Bristol Channel with his father, in the early 1830s, asked how the islanders could go to church. Ashley went to see, and from the islands of Flat Holm and Steep Holm seeing large fleets of wind bound ships, asked himself the same question. He used his own money (deriving mainly from the trade of sugar and slaves) to build a schooner, which he sailed in all weathers to provide an answer, in the process creating for himself a place in the ancestry of several Anglican and Catholic societies, of which the Mission to Seafarers, the Royal National Mission to Deep Sea Fishermen, and the Apostleship of the Sea, continue to provide seafarers with a valued and often heroic service.

Contents

1. Who was John Ashley?His Parents
His Early Years
After School
Indefatigable Curate
With Qualifications2. John Ashley Discovers a NeedA Pleasure Yacht for Dr Ashley3. John Ashley and his CommitteeJohn Ashley States his Case4. The Bristol Channel Mission: Lame Duck or Phoenix?5. John Ashley and The Missions to SeamenNegotiations with the Bristol Channel Mission6. John Ashley's later yearsJohn Ashley in Court Again?
John Ashley Leaving the Church of England?7. John Ashley in Context: Early Modern Seamen's MissionsThe Bible and Tract Societies
G.C. Smith
And what of Bristol?
London Episcopal Floating Church Society
Liverpool Mariners' Church SocietyConclusion: What has been Achieved?John Ashley's Faith
The Contradictions

Appendix 1: John Ashley: An InspirationAppendix 2: John Ashley: An Indirect InspirationAppendix 3: John Ashley's SiblingsAppendix 4: John Ashley, his Wife and Children

Extracts

About the Author

R.W.H. Miller, currently a Catholic priest in the west of England, has been a long-time student of Maritime Social History and member of the Society for Nautical Research and the International Maritime Economic History Association. He has worked for both the Missions to Seamen and the Apostleship of the Sea. He is the author of Priest in Deep Water (2010) and One Firm Anchor (2013), also published by The Lutterworth Press.

Reviews and Comments

I have been familiar for many years with Dr Miller's work on the history of the Church and the merchant seafarer. Dr Ashley's Pleasure Yacht uncovers the life of a nineteenth-century clergyman, John Ashley, a man with private means deriving from family sugar estates in Jamaica, makes some surprising discoveries. As Ashley is often claimed as the founder of the Mission to Seafarers, the story of his work visiting wind-bound ships in the Bristol Channel has been told often. Less well known is a major disagreement with his committee and what followed.
Professor Séan McGrail, Emeritus Professor of Maritime Archaeology, Oxford University